A Chinese bullet train producer said Thursday that it is expanding production capacity to cope with the country's rising demand for high-speed railways.

Wang Chenghui, deputy general manager of Tangshan Railway Vehicle Co. Ltd., said the company would double its monthly production capacity in the first half of 2010 to eight bullet trains each with eight compartments.

The company is China's only maker of bullet trains with an average speed of 350 km per hour, or a maximum test speed of 394.3 km per hour.

It has produced 22 trains to serve the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway, which began operation in December last year. Another 20 trains are running on the Beijing-Tianjin line, which is China's first fast-speed rail line operational in August 2008.

Wang said the company was developing new trains with average speed of 380 km per hour, so as to "reinforce its leading role in the world's high-speed train market."

China's government has launched a major upgrading of the nation's railways. The Ministry of Railways announced in September last year it would build 42 high-speed passenger rail lines with a total length of 13,000 kilometers in the next three years.